Consumerism Insights

I am reading a thought-provoking, although rather difficult, book titled, ‘Consuming Religion’ by a catholic author, Vincent J. Miller. It is extremely insightful and eye-opening with regards to consumerism as a broad cultural phenomenon which has risen to the fore in the West. His desire in writing is to educate us about the consumerism/religion relationship. I thought I would share a brief quote found midway through the second chapter that is helpful in its summation of some issues:

“[Religious leaders often see things for which they criticise consumerism…] We see an explicit system of values that was actively disseminated though advertising. After centuries of negative connotations, consumption not only became a necessary dimension of the economy but was promoted in service of the common good. Acquisitiveness became a virtue. Individualism was intensified in a variety of ways. The nuclear family in its single-family dwelling became the new fundamental unit of society. The social isolation that this brought was assuaged through consumption. Appliances stood in for the labour once exchanged as part of the lives of extended family or neighbourhood relations. Individualism was also intensified through the narcissism elicited by advertising. Deprived of communal sources of identity, people were encouraged to invest in commodity-based self-enhancements. The economic structure of the single family forms political and ethical choices in a way that corrodes a sense of the common good. Finally… the shift from the extended to the nuclear family weakened our relationships to cultural traditions.”

The author goes on to expose the shallowness and ineffectiveness of the above general critique, but I thought it was a brilliant summary of the onslaught of the consumer culture that now drastically taints our faith.

Simon